An­ge­lo Je­didi­ah

As con­cerns grow over Venezuela’s de­ci­sion to end its gas agree­ment with Trinidad and To­ba­go and the ar­rival of the US air­craft car­ri­er USS Ger­ald R. Ford in the re­gion, ex­perts re­main di­vid­ed on the im­pli­ca­tions and this coun­try’s re­sponse.

Re­tired Brigadier Gen­er­al Carl Al­fon­so, for­mer na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter, urged cit­i­zens not to pan­ic. Speak­ing on CNC3’s *The Morn­ing Brew*, Al­fon­so said, “I keep hear­ing that there’s go­ing to be a war, and Venezuela is go­ing to at­tack Trinidad, and so on and so on. I don’t know where they got all their in­tel­li­gence from. I don’t think Venezuela is go­ing to at­tack Trinidad. Why would Venezuela at­tack Trinidad? Why would Amer­i­ca at­tack Venezuela, is an­oth­er sto­ry. And I think we all know the sto­ry.”

Al­fon­so, who joined the De­fence Force in 1963 and was the first Caribbean of­fi­cer trained at a top US mil­i­tary acad­e­my, said he is “ex­cit­ed” to see the USS Ger­ald R. Ford. He ad­mit­ted the sit­u­a­tion be­tween the US and Venezuela is con­cern­ing but urged the pub­lic to re­main “calm” and “cool.”

In­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions lec­tur­er Dr Keron Niles said re­la­tions with Venezuela are cur­rent­ly strained and “not good” fol­low­ing Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro’s sus­pen­sion of gas deals with T&T. He said fu­ture di­a­logue could de­pend on po­lit­i­cal changes in Cara­cas.

“This no talk about Drag­on [gas] be­ing de­vel­oped with this cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion in Venezuela. Now, if per­sons are spec­u­lat­ing that there’s go­ing to be regime change in Venezuela, that’s an­oth­er is­sue,” Dr Niles said.

“Would it be pos­si­ble with a new regime? We’d have to wait and see… What’s be­fore us is the ad­min­is­tra­tion that is cur­rent­ly in Cara­cas has made their po­si­tion clear, and that has im­pli­ca­tions for our de­vel­op­ment.”

With the US pres­ence in the Caribbean—of­ten de­scribed as a “zone of peace”—Dr Niles said both the US and Venezuela may be en­gag­ing in psy­cho­log­i­cal op­er­a­tions to test each oth­er’s re­solve. He warned that any mil­i­tary move by Venezuela would be “un­wise” giv­en the strength of US forces.

Dr Niles al­so ad­vised cit­i­zens to stay ground­ed. “What you should be do­ing is sim­ply plan­ning for your­self and your fam­i­ly. And as lead­ers, what our lead­ers should be do­ing is mak­ing sure that they plan for our fu­ture col­lec­tive­ly.”